December 17, 2010 -- Rabble.ca -- Six months ago, I wrote a piece for rabble.ca describing the appalling treatment of the people of the Chagos Islands [which includes Diego Garcia] in the Indian Ocean by the British government.

The audience was diverse, with a range of ages and ethnic backgrounds represented. Photo by Robert Alcock.

By Peter Boyle, Sydney

November 26, 2010 -- All around the Western world, far-right groups (some with neo-Nazi
orgins and links) are gaining political ground through an orchestrated
campaign against Muslim communities. By spreading fear and hatred
against recent immigrant communities from Muslim countries these groups
have tapped into well-resourced post-9/11 war propaganda campaigns
initiated by rulers of the world’s richest and most powerful states.

One of the favourite tactics of these anti-Muslim hate campaigners is
to push laws banning the burqa, the fully veiled dress style used by a
tiny minority of Muslim women. In Australia, the ultra-conservative
Reverend Fred Nile, leader of the Christian Democratic Party
and a member of the NSW Legislative Council, and Liberal senator Cori
Bernardi from South Australia, have unsuccessfully tried to move private
member's bills to ban the burqa.

October 26, 2010 — “My next guests are a gypsy punk rock band that have been called the world’s most visionary band”, US TV show host Jay Leno said when he introduced Gogol Bordello to close the October 13, 2010. Jay Leno Show.

The US-based band, led by a charismatic Roma (or “gypsy”) refugee from the Ukraine, Eugene Hutz, performed “Pala Tute”, the opening track from this year’s Transcontinental Hustle.

If “most visionary” is an exaggeration, Gogol Bordello could at least lay claim to being one of the most interesting and important acts in popular music right now.

October 22, 2010 -- In the foundational text of the Marxist movement, the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels paint a vivid word picture of the awesome, world-shaking advance of capitalism.

The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.

This “impulse” created the world market, “for which the discovery of America paved the way”, and which further revolutionised the means of production. Without consideration for human life or suffering, the bourgeoisie created a “world after its own image” in which “even the most barbarian, nations [are drawn] into civilisation”.

August 29, 2010 -- Since the rise of Pim Fortuyn in 2002, Islamophobia
has played a central role in Dutch politics. Geert Wilders and his
Freedom Party have now emerged as a threat to all progressive forces.
There is no point in trying to change the subject and hoping the danger
will pass; Islamophobia has to be confronted head on. But intelligently –
knee-jerk defences of anything a Muslim says or does will definitely
not help.

To be clear: in the Netherlands today Islamophobia is
the main form taken by racism. It has nothing to do with criticism of
Islam as a religion. If Wilders and his followers say that not one more
Muslim should be allowed into the country, they don’t mean that Moroccan
and Turkish Christians and atheists are welcome. "Muslim" is for them
simply a convenient epithet for "those other people".

Sam Watson, Socialist Alliance Senate candidate for Queensland. Longstanding leader of the Aboriginal community of Brisbane, campaigner against Black deaths in custody and for Indigenous rights.

On July 24, 2010, Australia's leading socialist newspaper Green Left Weekly spoke to Peter Boyle, national convener of the Socialist Alliance, about the political climate of the 2010 federal election, to be held on August 21.

* * *

Many progressive people are feeling depressed about the federal election. How do you see it?

The Australian Labor Party and the conservative Liberal Party-National Party Coalition are in a “race to the
bottom”, as Socialist Alliance lead Queensland Senate candidate and
Murri [Indigenous] community leader Sam Watson aptly put it.

July 26, 2010 -- Throughout Europe there is a growing movement that seeks to ban
Muslim women who chose to do so from wearing the veil. In Britain today
this demand comes mainly from the far-right British National Party (BNP), UK Independence Party (UKIP) and some individuals on the Conservative Party (Tory) right. Things though may change for the worse, already the Tory
tabloids are stirring on this question.

This is but one part of a growing Islamophobic trend which has seen
Muslim minorities become even more marginalised and demonised in Western
Europe than they were previously. Though this demand originated on the
far right it is now increasingly taken up by the mainstream bourgeois
parties culminating in the recent decision of the French parliament to
make wearing the veil a criminal offence. In France what is equally
shameful is the failure of most of the French left to oppose it in any
meaningful way, members of the Greens, the Socialist Party and the Communist Party
having abstained on this law in the French parliament.

July 24, 2010 -- Green Left Weekly -- In one of her first policy changes after replacing Kevin Rudd as
leader of the Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister Julia Gillard dumped Rudd’s
idea of a “big Australia”. On June 26, Gillard said “Australia should not hurtle down the track
towards a big population”. Instead, she called for a “sustainable
population”.

Almost four weeks on, however, Labor’s policy has no details — just
lots of rhetoric designed to pander to fears that immigration
(particularly asylum seekers) is causing a raft of social problems.

Join in demanding freedom for Leonard Peltier, so that at long last simple justice be done for him and the Indigenous peoples of North America. Sign this petition
urging his release. Petitions are also being circulated urging clemency and urging US Congress to investigate FBI misconduct on
Pine Ridge and the “reign of terror” that existed between 1973 and 1976. This article was first written in 1998.

July 21, 2010 -- On July 13, the parliament of France, on the eve of Bastille Day, voted 335 to one in
favour of preventing Muslim women wearing a full face-covering veil in
public. The July 13 Le Monde said the new law was strongly supported by
the right. The Socialist Party, Communist Party
(PCF) and Green Party abstained. Anyone who chooses to wear a face covering on religious grounds now
faces a fine of 150 euros or a “citizenship course”. The law does not
come into effect until spring 2011 to allow a period of “education”. There is also a year in prison and a fine of 30,000 euros for anyone
found guilty of forcing a woman to wear a veil, a penalty which is
doubled if the “victim is a minor”.

Earlier this year, the Indian organisation Radical Socialist issued a statement taking up this wave of Islamophobic legislation in Europe.

Below is an excerpt from Thai socialist Giles Ji Ungpakorn's latest
book, Thailand’s Crisis and the
Fight for Democracy. It provides an historical background to Thai
politics from the pre-capitalist era,
through the turmoil of the 1930s and 1970s, up to the present day. It has been posted
atLinks International Journal of Socialist Renewal withGiles
Ji Ungpakorn's permission.

Giles Ji Ungpakorn is a political
commentator and dissident. In February 2009
he had to leave Thailand for exile in Britain because he was charged
with lèse majesté for writing a book criticising
the 2006 military coup. His latest book will be of interest to
activists, academics and journalists who have an interest in Thai
politics, democratisation and NGOs.

Dili, July 7, 2010 -- According to
Australian foreign affairs policy announced by the
Australian prime minister in Sydney recently and published by a range of media,
including the Indonesian newspaper the Java Post, “Prime Minister
(PM) Julia Gillard has tightened Australia immigration law. Not wanting
to be bothered by the economic and social problems caused by asylum
seekers, the Australian leader plans to build a detention center for
asylum seekers in Timor-Leste” As quoted by Associated Press (Java
Post, 07/07/2010).

July 7, 2010 -- Acting against our alleged "ambush marketing" and "incitement" (sic), the South African Police Service, newly augmented with 40,000 additional cadre for the World Cup, detained several of us here in Durban last weekend. We were simply exercising freedom of expression at our favourite local venue, the South Beach Fan Fest, whose half-million visitors is a record.

Wearing hidden microphones so as to tape discussions with police leadership, what we learned was chilling, for they have received orders from Durban city manager Mike Sutcliffe that the property rights of the world soccer body, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), overrule our foundational constitutional rights.

“We can charge you and detain you until the 11th of July, [when] FIFA is over!”, a top officer shouted at me during my second interrogation, on Saturday, July 3.

June 25, 2010 -- South Africa's soccer-loving critics have long predicted the problems now growing worse here
because of its World Cup hosting duties:

loss of large chunks of government’s sovereignty to the world soccer
body FIFA;

rapidly worsening income inequality;

future economic calamities as debt payments come due;

dramatic increases in greenhouse gas emissions (more than twice
Germany’s in 2006); and

humiliation and despondency as the country’s soccer team Bafana Bafana
(ranked #90 going into the games) became the first host to expire before
the competition’s second round.

Soon, it seems, we may also add to this list a problem that terrifies
progressives here and everywhere: another dose of xenophobia from both
state and society.

The crucial question in coming weeks is whether, instead of offering some
kind of resistance from below, as exemplified by the Durban Social Forum
network’s 1000-strong rally against FIFA on June 16 at City Hall, Durban, will
society’s sore losers adopt right-wing populist sentiments, and frame
the foreigner?

[The following address -- the
fourth Strini Moodley Annual Memorial Lecture, held at the University of
KwaZulu-Natal on May 13, 2010 – was delivered by renowned South African
revolutionary socialist and theorist Neville Alexander. From 1964 to 1974 he
was imprisoned on Robben Island. Strinivasa Rajoo "Strini" Moodley
(December 22, 1945–April 27, 2006) was a founding member of the Black Consciousness Movement in South
Africa. In 1976, he was convicted of terrorism in a trial involving members of
the South African Students'
Organisation and the Black People's Convention, and imprisoned
on Robben Island. The speech is posted at Links
International Journal of Socialist Renewal with Neville Alexander’s
permission.]

May 3, 2010 -- The bailout of the debt-ridden Greek government seems finally to be
complete. The European Union (EU) – most centrally the French and German
treasuries – along with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will
provide €110 billion ($150 billion) in emergency loans. The price for
these loans will be high. Along with steep tax increases and cuts in
spending, the loans are conditional on a public sector wage freeze being
extended through to 2014.[1] This is in reality a wage cut, as there
will be drastic changes to the so-called “bonuses” – holiday pay that
has become an essential part of the income package of low-paid public
sector workers.

The anger at these cuts is everywhere in Greek society.
Giorgos Papadapoulos is a 28-year-old policeman who normally confronts
demonstrators. But in March he put aside his riot shield and joined the
mass protests which have become a regular part of life in Greece. “It’s a
different feeling for me”, he told journalists while he was on the
demonstration. “But this is important. It hurts me and my family.”[2]
However, the crisis in Greece has revealed not just a shift to the left
in Europe. It has also brought to the surface a seamy reactionary
underside to politics in the EU portion of the Eurasian landmass.

Manning Marable’s latest book, Beyond Black & White, is an update of a valuable critique of
Black and US politics first issued in 1995. He revised it last year, adding new
chapters covering the period from 1995 to 2008, including an analysis of the
meaning of the election of the first African-American president of the United
States, Barack Obama, in November 2008.

The closing chapter, “Barack Obama, the 2008
Presidential Election and the Prospects for a ‘Post Racial Politics”, is a good
place to begin reading the collection of articles and essays. Marable’s two prefaces
—for the first and new edition — outline his views on “Black and white” and the
evolution of how race impacts US political conversations and the failure of
leadership in the Black community.